As she steps up her appeals to Black voters, Vice President Kamala Harris appeared on a popular Black radio program Tuesday, saying she is still open to slavery reparations and slamming former President Donald Trump for allegedly sending Covid tests to Russia “when Black people were dying” back home.
In a wide-ranging live radio town hall in Detroit hosted by syndicated radio host Charlamagne Tha God, Harris faced pointed questions from the host and his guests, some of whom said they felt Black voters have been taken for granted by Democrats while getting “very little in return.”
Asked about her time as a prosecutor and criticism that she worked to imprison Black men on drug charges, Harris defended her record, saying she did not seek jail time for offenders who were charged only with possession of marijuana.
“I will work on decriminalizing it, because I know exactly how those laws have been used to disproportionately impact certain populations, and specifically Black men,” she said about working to change the laws around marijuana.
Trump’s campaign responded to the attacks in the interview by pointing to polls that find a majority of Black voters think the country is on the wrong track.
“During the interview, she proposed imposing reparations which could cost the US $10 trillion to $12 trillion,” Janiyah Thomas, Trump’s Black media director, said in a statement. “In Kamala’s America, Black Americans know that we come last — after illegal immigrants, the war in Ukraine and now in the Middle East.”